Delivering a quality upgrade experience

This is a little bit of a tricky post to write because we’re going to be asking everyone using our Windows 7 Beta to help us out, but doing so is going to take a little time and require a bit of a commitment to helping test the next milestone. This has been a remarkably valuable and beneficial testing cycle for Windows as we have had a tremendous amount of very rigorous testing and usage. We’ve had millions of people install and use the Beta since January and as we’ve talked about, the feedback and telemetry have been of tremendous value as we finalize the product. The effort of Beta testers has contributed immensely to our ability to deliver a high-quality product to hundreds of millions of customers. We continue to follow the plan we have previously outlined and this post is no announcement of any news or change in plans. Since we know many people are running the Beta we want to provide a heads up regarding the behavior of the Release Candidate (RC) as it pertains to upgrades. Of course we are working hard on the RC and following the schedule we have set out for ourselves.

A big part of the beta process is making sure we get as much “real world” coverage of scenarios and experiences as possible and monitor the telemetry of those experience overall. One of the most challenging areas to engineer is the process of upgrading one release of Windows to another. When you think about it, it is the one place where at one time we need to run a ton of code to basically “know” everything about a system before performing the upgrade. During the development of Windows 7 we routinely test hundreds of original OEM images from Windows Vista and upgrade them and then run automated tests validating the upgrade’s success. We also test thousands of applications and many thousands of devices as they too move through the upgrade process.

Many of you installed the Windows 7 beta on a PC running Vista. We received that telemetry and acted on it accordingly. We believe we’ve continued to improve the upgrade experience throughout the release. Similarly, based on our telemetry most of you did clean installations onto new drive partitions. Through this telemetry we learned about the device ecosystem and what drivers were available or missing. We also learned about PC-specific functions that required installing a driver / application (from XP or Vista) to enable support for buttons, connectors, or other hardware components. Together we get great coverage of the setup experience.

We’ve also learned that many of you (millions) are running Windows 7 Beta full time. You’re anxious for a refresh. You’ve installed all your applications. You’ve configured and customized the system. You would love to get the RC and quickly upgrade to it from Beta. The RC, however, is about getting breadth coverage to validate the product in real-world scenarios. As a result, we want to encourage you to revert to a Vista image and upgrade or to do a clean install, rather than upgrade the existing Beta. We know that means reinstalling, recustomizing, reconfiguring, and so on. That is a real pain. The reality is that upgrading from one pre-release build to another is not a scenario we want to focus on because it is not something real-world customers will experience. During development we introduce changes in the product (under the hood) that aren’t always compatible with what we call “build-to-build” upgrade. The supported upgrade scenario is from Windows Vista to Windows 7. Before you go jump to the comment section, we want to say we are going to provide a mechanism for you to use if you absolutely require this upgrade. As an extended member of the development team and a participant in the Beta program that has helped us so much, we want to ask that you experience real-world setup and provide us real-world telemetry.

If you do follow the steps below, you might run across some oddities after upgrade. We experience these internally at Microsoft occasionally but we don’t always track them down and fix them because they take time away from bugs that would not only manifest themselves during this one-time pre-release operation. From time to time we’ve noticed on a few blogs that people are using builds that we have not officially released and complained of “instabilities” after upgrade. Nearly all of these have been these build-to-build issues. We’ve seen people talk about how a messenger client stopped working, a printer or device “disappears”, or start menu shortcuts are duplicated. These are often harmless and worst case often involves reinstalling the software or device.

We’re just trying to be deterministic and engineer the product for the real world. Speaking of the real world, many have asked about upgrading from Windows XP. There’s no change here to the plan as has been discussed on many forums. We realized at the start of this project that the “upgrade” from XP would not be an experience we think would yield the best results. There are simply too many changes in how PCs have been configured (applets, hardware support, driver model, etc.) that having all of that support carry forth to Windows 7 would not be nearly as high quality as a clean install. This is something many of you know and already practice. We do provide support for moving files and settings and will prompt at setup time, but applications will need to be reinstalled. We know that for a set of customers this tradeoff seems less than perfect, but we think the upfront time is well worth it.

So when you try to upgrade a pre-RC build you will find that you’re not able to and setup will tell you and you can then exit gracefully. You can install as a clean installation and use the Windows Easy Transfer feature as well (run this from your current installation of course) if you wish to move your accounts, settings, files, and more. To bypass the version check, the instructions below will use a mechanism that is available for enterprise customers (so we are also testing this as well). It is not a simple command line switch. We didn’t make it multi-step on purpose but wanted to stick to using proven, documented and tested mechanisms.

These instructions will be brief. Since everyone reading is a well-versed and experienced beta tester you know ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR MACHINE before running any OS installation and NEVER TEST AN OS ON YOUR ONLY COPY OF ANY DATA. Testing a pre-release product means just that—it is testing and it is pre-release. Even though this is a Release Candidate, we are still testing the product. We have very high confidence but even if an error happens once in 1,000,000 we want to make sure everyone is taking the precautions normal for a pre-release product.

One other related caution is INSTALL ONLY OFFICIALLY RELEASED BUILDS FROM MICROSOFT. It will always be tempting to get the build with the “mod” already done but you really never know what else has been done to the build. There’s a thrill in getting the latest, we know, but that also comes with risks that can’t even be quantified. For the RC we will work to release a hash or some other way to validate the build, but the best way is to always download directly from Microsoft.

Here’s what you can do to bypass the check for pre-release upgrade IF YOU REALLY REALLY NEED TO:

Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.

Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).

Browse to the sources directory.

Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.

Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).

Save the file in place with the same name.

Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

These same steps will be required as we transition from the RC milestone to the RTM milestone.

Again, we know many people (including tens of thousands at Microsoft) are relying on the pre-release builds of Windows 7 for mission critical and daily work, making this step less than convenient. We’re working hard to provide the highest quality release we can and so we’d like to make sure for this final phase of testing we’re supporting the most real world scenarios possible, which incremental build to build upgrades are not. At the same time everyone on the beta has been so great we wanted to make sure we at least offered an opportunity to make your own expert and informed choice about how to handle the upgrade.

We’re always humbled by the excitement around the releases and by the support and enthusiasm from those that choose to run our pre-releases. We’re incredibly appreciative of the time and effort you put into doing so. In return we hope we are providing you with a great release to work with at each stage of the evolution of the product. Our next stop is the RC…see you there!

THANK YOU!

–Windows 7 Team

PS: At Step 1 above many of you are probably thinking, “hey why don’t you just let me mount the ISO and skip the plastic disc”. We’ve heard this feedback and we deserve the feedback. We don’t have this feature in Windows 7 and we should have. So please don’t fill the comments with this request. There are several third party tools for mounting and if you’ve got a Vista image there’s a good chance your PC came with those tools on it.

Hi team. I have been trying some of the other builds out, but have now almost copied this before you even posted it. I reverted to Vista Home premium (factory install) and then re-installed an upgrade to Windows 7 build 7000 in anticapation of the RC1 when its released. That means I am now back with IE8 crashing nearly all the time when trying to access some of my favourite websites.

This was actually one of the reasons why I tried one of the ‘unofficial’ builds as it is fixed in those, so I wait with baited breath for the RC1 to be lauched so that I can then surf with no problems!

Keep up the good work Windows 7 team, you are doing a great job, oh and thanks for listening.

I just wanted to thank you guys for being so open and involved in the beta/RC program. It’s awesome, and quite a deviation from previous Windows beta programs. It’s also a bit surprising that you guys aren’t absolutely furious about all the leaks, but I guess that’s just more real world testing. Can’t wait for the RC, and the RTM.

I’m eager for the Release Candidate as well, and I hope you’ve monitored that Windows7taskforce.com website – they’ve noted some inconsistencies in wording and icon styling, and how some things, like Task Manager and Windows Defender, which could use the now in-icon progress indicator ability of Windows 7. I hope more programs make use of that excellent at-a-glance functionality.

I hope Win7 can bring improved podcast support to WMP and WMC, and that the improvements to Win7 will continue past RTM. Looking to the future, I hope that the first Service Pack will bring a host of new features that you wanted in RTM but couldn’t put in there due to time constraints.

Well, i’m still using XP because you (microsoft) leave me no other choice. I happen to have converted my system disk to a dynamic disk, and by doing so, and the crap support from windows vista , and now windows 7, i won’t be able to install any other OS ever, considering i’m not about to loose everthing else on this disk. How about some dynamic disk support!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just curious, what feature of dynamic disks do you depend upon? And, since XP to Windows 7 isn’t a supported upgrade, you can always use Windows Easy Transfer(WET or Migwiz) from the Windows 7 DVD to copy your data off to an external location & then clean install Windows 7 using WET to restore your data.

I haven’t upgraded a Microsoft OS since Windows 98. Its is just a given when switching to a new version of Windows that a complete whipe and fresh install is the only way to avoid broken software, performance loss and funky crash states and or obscure error messages.

I installed Win 7 x64 Beta on my machine. I have a Asus K8V Deluxe motherboard with AMD64 3400+. Some of the drives run on a Promise 150 TX2 Plus. Now, those drivers came on the Vista x64 OEM disc that I got from Microsoft, but The Win 7 DVD didn’t have them, do you think the RC is going to? I have all of my personal data on those disk, and if I can’t use them, I can’t be running Win7. Hopefully some here can help me and I would love to run Win 7. The little time I played with it, absolutely loved it 100%. I’m one of the few that loves Vista too, but I felt like Win7 ran a lot smoother on my machine. Thanks for the help.

"Is it ready yet?" … heck I don’t care; I’ll take it just the way it is <VBG> – it has to be better than XP.

One upgrade scenario that I didn’t see addressed and I would like to know before doing the Vista re-install upgrade suffle is will there be an upgrade route direct from Vista x86 -> Win7 x64? This was the only reason that I haven’t installed Win7 on all of my systems – Beta wouldn’t allow upgrade from Vista x86 to Win7 x64.

First, Looks like Windows 7 will be the one that makes me wan’t to forget XP, so GREAT job Windows 7 team! Second, I’ve installed Windows 7 64-bit (beta 7068) on my second partition using a clean install, overwriting Windows Vista 32bit and Win7 beta 7000 without a problem. Third, will 64-bit be pushed a lot more this go around?

I have a small computer service business and I’m entertaining doing an upgrade of my Vista workstation at the release of the next RC. I’m using a domain with Server 2008 and Vista, XP and one other W7 workstation(s). It isn’t a problem to image my Vista machine for safety and then try this. The Vista install has been in use for about 18 months. I would do this both for myself and to add to the collection of experience data. I need to get my feet wet from the support side of Windows 7 is another reason to give this a shot. I have Vista 32 but would like to use the 64 bit Windows 7 if possible. Will that be possible with the next RC?

* Windows 2008 R2 Std version will allow max 32Gig memory, but W7 will support 128Gig. If it stays that way a lot of people will run w7 on their latest server hardware to avoid this odd limitation. Especially considering even low end servers already now support 48Gig for very little money.

* Dynamic disc: Please support raid 10, it is truly annoying having to depend on very flaky hardware implementations of raid to get this.

* Dynamic disk setup in installation.

* Dynamic disc Raid 5 and 1 (and 10): Add support for dirty bitmaps like Linux has had for ages, so that rebuilds does not take forever.

I have run Win 7 as my primary OS on my primary system since release. I am a gaming enthusiast, and have been putting Win 7 through its paces with the hope of having the RTM be a rock solid gaming platform (since we all know Vista failed miserably to meet the gaming communities expectations). My experience so far has been hit or miss. I realise Microsoft has no control over the stability of individual games or QC over their code. However, DX10 and ATI 4870 X2 (cat 9.3 Win 7 wddm) do not play well on too many games. I am sure a large portion of the mountainous gaming/DX10 telemetry is my fault 😉 What I want to see: You can’t prevent bad game code from occasionally hanging/crashing, I would rather crash to desktop, than blackscreen/reboot (which is the norm not the exception on Win 7 build 7000). Maybe this is fixed in RC, I will definately be clean installing to that once it is released, if not, PLEASE fix the feature that is supposed to prevent 3D apps from crashing the whole system. While the gaming community is a narrow demograph, rest assured that they are the ones that migrate if it works, and blog about it if it doesn’t!

This really doesn’t seem like the appropriate place to be suggesting this to me but I’m not sure where else to go!

I have several small suggestions regarding the taskbar. I absolutely love all the new things I can do with the taskbar. There are a few things which I would like to be able to drag and have stick to the right side of the taskbar, it just seems like they should be over there.

Also, an option to force certain apps to stay in the "combined" mode where they have a small cube shaped entry in the taskbar while the rest of the items are not in "combined" mode would be nice. I like using the "Combine when taskbar is full" option. There are a few apps which only ever have one window open by design and can be very easily identified by their icon. In combination with having them open almost 100% of the time I’m using my PC would make this option very useful. The ability to force these apps to keep their icon only in the taskbar without any text would save me a ton of space.

Since all my home computers, as well as those at work are XP (32bit), and in particular because I’m planning to move them all to Win7 64bit – there won’t be any other way.

Oh, ofcourse, I won’t move all of them to RC, I’m talking about future move to final copies of Win 7 (probably Enterprise at work since we have access to them; Premium for home computers).

But one feature I will be trying, if I only get time, is that User State Migration Tool 4.0 with those hard-linked files and all that (remember? http://edge.technet.com/Media/User-State-Migration-with-Windows-7/ ). This is something that I will almost certainly use to move all company users from XP to Win7 when the time arrives, so this is what I will be testing.

Real world you want, real world you get 🙂 Testing exact things that I’m going to use once Win7 is available for sale 😉

Just a quick comment and a request. I love Win7. This will be a redefining product for Microsoft. I have used every version of Windows and many of Nix. This is the best. Now a request – PLEASE provide a mechanism for disabling the Libraries feature. I have seen this request on numerous Win7-related forums and the most common response is, "just do x,y, and, and live with it". It is not a matter of failing to understand the concept or to appreciate Microsoft’s innovativeness. However, not everyone uses an OS in exactly the same way, and I truly have no use for this feature. I merely want the choice to "opt out". I could go on…but this is a simple request. And please, no Billy Sunday conversion speeches from Library fanboys :). I may have given away my age with that reference. Thank you Microsoft (not sure I would have envisioned that remark in years past). It is well desreved now, however.

I love the Windows 7 beta, I have all the builds that have been "unreleased" but have ended up on my site’s FTP annomyously!

I haven’t upgraded from 7000 yet, seeing as every time I plan to, I find a new file starting to be uploaded to my server, and each and every time, I don’t feel like risking the install through an ISO file (even though I did that to upgrade it from Vista)

One problem I have found is that running this OS on older hardware means that hardware that used to be able to play even the most basic of games won’t play much anymore. In my case, this is a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop that happens to have a GeForce 4 Go 440 (32Mb) card in it, and on my Nlited XP installation, it runs Halo and a few other D3D games fine, but on 7, I get problems playing any game, and it complains about not finding D3d, but DxDiag says it is running fine… any reason for that?

Right team, I am now back with Vista Home Premium ready for the RC1 so that I can do the upgrade to Windows 7. Back in Vista its amazing the features that you miss about Windows 7. The jump lists, the icons on the taskbar, the Action Centre and the fantastic themes. It’s nice to be back with Windows Live One Care though! (and a none crashing IE8!)

I think the GUI improvement of Win7 is significant. However, I’d like to share with your team a suggestion that I have heard a lot: you should really consider slenderizing the window frame (when it is not maximized). It just occupies a lot of desktop space and does not make much sense (making win7 look fat).

Come on team, there are still crucial problems that need to be addressed. You have done great, and we have a lot to be happy about, but this product is still far from perfect, and most of the issues are so simply solved with simple changes. Many of my / others’ previous posts are LOADED with great ideas that would make this the best OS ever from MS.

I honestly do hope you will take at least some of the major, thousand times requested features and put them in. (Come on PAUSING a file transfer without a third party program…)

If you don’t want to waste a disk to burn the ISO file, and have a little free space, another very simple way to do this is to use one of the many freely downloadable *zip type programs to extract the contents of the ISO onto a folder on your hard drive or thumbdrive and use that as your installation media. I personally do all my installs from thumbdrives and love it.

It is time for MS to make it easy for the end user’s and those that support them to upgrade from previous versions, or buy a new computer for the new OS and move EVERYTHING from the old computer easily. No having to buy PC Mover from Laplink, or having to re-install all of their software.

Your customer focus is long gone, and needs to return. Most of us skipped the fiasco that was VISTA.

If this next one is as painful as your recent attempts, I will be moving freinds and family to either Apple, or LINUX. I have not more patience for the crapware and horrible customer service coming from Redmond.

What’s MS’s standpoint on installing the "leaks" from the torrent sites? I know they wouldn’t support those versions officially, but is it considered "illegal" or are they kinda ho-hum on the whole matter? Seems that these torrents are all over the place and with new ones practically every day, it would seem that it would be a good way for MS to get real world feedback on the newest builds. Could someone from the Win7 team comment?

My experience with Windows 7 beta has been very good since such point I feel part of my PC would like, me that the launching left the final version candidate to be able to have it in Spanish and a question cannot be made updates of a beta to the RC and as would be the errors that could give in case of updating, because to return to install Windows Vista SP1 I would not like to lose all my programs installed in my computer, would be something arduous for my, since I must be constantly connected to Internet

My experience with Windows 7 beta has been very good since such point I feel part of my PC would like, me that the launching left the final version candidate to be able to have it in Spanish and a question cannot be made updates of a beta to the RC and as would be the errors that could give in case of updating, because to return to install Windows Vista SP1 I would not like to lose all my programs installed in my computer, would be something arduous for my, since I must be constantly connected to Internet

For folks running the Beta, will that expire or will we be able to hang on without having to go through the RC and hence two conversions? Each conversion causes multiple problems with non-Microsoft software activation issues (the need to get new activation codes due to an additional replacement installation). Can we elect to keep running the Beta until we do a complete new re-install with the RTM? In other words, please don’t do a forced Beta expire until the RTM is available. Thanks.

What a great product you are making! I cannot wait to see and use the final version of it.

However (I realize this has been brought up by many people, and I want to add to their weight):

THERE IS STILL SOME WORK TO DO! You have seen this URL in many comments and are probably getting sick of it, but here it is again: http://www.windows7taskforce.com. Much of the stuff there is as serious as it should be simple to fix. I am a developer myself. For anyone familiar with the code a lot of the requests could certainly be done in minutes.

See for example the crucial http://www.windows7taskforce.com/view/1854 which has the potential to save every laptop user 30 seconds of time when shutting down – much more than can be gained by any elaborate startup optimizations.

For all critics of the Taskforce:

I myself would very much perfer if the Taskforce was run officially by Microsoft. This way I could be sure that the ideas are seen by the right people. However, referring to the official boards as the "right place to go" is NOT and adequate criticism of the Taskforce, as they certainly cannot be compared to it in terms of sheer usability and transparency.

I beg you to take the people on the Taskforce seriously. Their number may be very small compared to the entire Windows user base of hundreds of millions, but the problems they address are common annoyances for all of us.

I can see now that windows 7 now has the most stupid feature just like vista. When this feature is used correctly it works but if you don’t have a flash drive it does not work. I’m talking about "ReadyBoost". In vista I could install it and get everything right and the thing would still suck back gobs of memory to like 900 megs of memory then after a few min fall back to 400 megs of memory. I KNOW WHY BECAUSE WHEN READYBOOST DOES NOT HAVE A FLASH DRIVE IT USES YOUR SYSTEM MEMORY INSTEAD!!!.

Now in windows Vista if you went into HKEY-LM-CCS-Services-Ecache you could turn off the ReadyBoot Feature this made my Vista boot in 7 sec compared to 15 sec with the dame thing on. Memory usage a mere 387 megs not 900 megs.

Now I’m in windows 7 testing it out and I noticed that the thing is sucking back 900 megs of memory again which means that the Readyboot feature is stuck on. So basicly now I boot up it uses 950 megs of memory at boot wait about 3 min and it drops to 389 megs of memory. So its now using 450 megs of wasted memory!!!.

I tried to turn off this service and all I got was a blue screen of death. Great Windows 7 was looking so good till you added this stupid feature. Back to my 7 sec vista now because now 7 takes longer to boot with that feature forced on.

Why did you remove check/uncheck option "Keep the taskbar on top" from taskbar properties? It was very convenient in Windows XP, I used it sometimes to avoid bugs in fullscreen (maximized the window instead of going fullscreen). I found the absence of it irritating… Will it be included in the final build?

Why apologize for not providing an upgrade path from Win7 beta to RC? This sets a silly president.

Most of my Win7 machines are dual-boot. It makes good sense for beta testing. (rookie beta testers should take heed.) I am a “clean install” guy anyway, so MS won’t BE getting any “upgrade feedback” from me. (sorry)

What I would like to see is the Win7 team working with the WHS team to accomplish this:

I would like the WHS Restore CD to provide an option for doing a clean OS install from ISO image stored on the WHS box(I have Daemon Tools on my WHS box, but it would be very nice if the WHS team would incorporate mounting ISO in basic WHS functionality), and then be able to select a back-up set to retrieve just the data from, as part of the “restore process”. THAT WOULD BE VERY SLICK, as often times I would prefer to do a fresh install anyway, when resorting to restoring a crashed machine. Why restore to a previous STATE if you can’t be sure the state was good at time of backup? The data is the important part. Managed re-installation of the program files would be cool as well, as this would help get the machine back up and running in a more timely manner. I believe that this would be a viable option when restoring a PC in conjunction with the WHS Restore, and would allow for keeping fewer back-up sets.

It doesn’t seem like this would be a difficult task for the MS teams to accomplish, if they would work together on it. (Win7 & WHS Teams) It would also help convince more people to invest in upgrading to Win7 along with WHS.

I can’t remember the last time I did an in-place OS upgrade, they just don’t work. All you get is an unreliable machine and you end up wiping the thing later anyway.

At least that’s what I thought until Win7 offered me the upgrade from Vista and I thought "screw it, why not" :o) I was fully expecting to have to wipe it after a week, but the idea of not having to reinstall all my apps and all the laptop utils I can’t live without was just too tempting. Anyway, long story short, I’m glad I took the gamble, even freaky things like the fingerprint reader that I thought would *never* work without reinstalling have just worked. I was well and truly surprised!

So anyway, I’ll be doing an upgrade from Vista to RC. And not ‘clean’ Vista either, it will be the backup I took before I upgraded to Win 7 the first time round.

Just a quick suggestion. I have been archiving some decade-old stuff and been using a lot 7zip lately. It struck me, how cool would it be, Windows 7 offering built-in 7-zip support. Better, make it an official Windows archive format.

I haven’t installed my Windows 7 yet and have a couple of quetions is all. I have Vista Ultimate, intel (R0 Core (TM)2 Duo E8400 processor, on my computer so I am debating what to do. I have the following programs, not installed yet, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V and Virtual PC 2007. I have been thinking about installing Windows 7 as a virtual PC on a seperate hard drive, usb. I have 5 PC’s at home here that are networked. I just finished my BSIT/software engineering and am now going for my masters in information systems. My question is, which one of the above would be the best to use to accomplish this?

Still hope for always refreshing thumbnails in the superbar…refresh just the window where you look at the preview right now…thats enought…but what brings us a PREVIEW where we cant see whats going on when the window is minimized…please let the window who is shown as a preview right now refresh the content…

I’ve been running Windows 7 for about 3-4 months now. I recently clean installed over my 7000 build with 7077- I’ve been eating the hype like a junkie, and just had too . Although I feel everything runs faster, and it feels nicer, I still feel there is a fair bit MORE that needs to be done for it to be the unified, solid product that it should be. I’m going to list the things I think need to happen for it to be the best it can be, and you should feel free to add on to this list, or challenge the points made.

1. Re-do all icons to match the new style. At the moment, like many other parts of the operating system, its a mess. You’ve got icons from Vista- Hell, there are even some around from XP if you dig hard enough- and if Microsoft want’s 7 to be as untarnished as possible upon release, an overhaul of the icons to this new style IS a nescessity.

2. There’s been a lot of discussion about a new theme for 7. Reading about it, I’ve come to three logical conclusions:

-There’s nothing particularly wrong with Aero, it looks great on 7

-Not everybody like’s glass

-Aero is too closely associated with Vista

To fix this, I think that Microsoft needs to evolve Aero, rather than revolutionize it- a blending of Aero into the borders, as seen in Office 2010, would be a great start. Feel free to expand upon this.

3. The basic theme direly needs an overhaul. Some people will never see it, as their computers will run Aero off the bat. However, many, many people either won’t have access to Aero or their drivers won’t instantly work. Whatever the cause, some people will see this theme and it needs not to be disgusting. Even a straight port of Aero without transparency would feel like a godsend. Whatever they do, they need to do it.

4. Unified Control Panel. When I jumped from 7000 to 7077, I really liked how much cleaner the Control Panel’s GUI felt. However, after reading a comment about it on windows7taskforce, I actually went through pretty much every icon in the Control Panel- and found that it is a garbled, confusing mess. I found it hard to get to what I wanted to get too, and there were links everywhere for mostly thinks that weren’t even associated with what I was doing. Frankly, it’s just confusing. I use Leopard on the other side of my Macbook, and the unifed Control Panel is so easy and clarified to use in comparison. Something like this would be great.

5. The Installation Process has had a great improvement from Vista. The Clean Install of 7077 ran fast, and was ready to go as soon as I’d finished. However, many things just don’t seem to fit, and some things definitely need to be streamlined. The reminiscent green from Vista is apparent throughout, and it just begs the question, why? The flat greenish-yellow loading bar along the bottom is ugly, and unescessarily so- a blue, glossy loading bar would fit much better. As well as this, the sort of mystical start up animation style would be nice- glowing colours. Again, if they want to draw away from Vista, incorporate more of 7’s colours into the OS and the Installation Process- blue and white. It would look much cleaner.

6. The Logon Screen. As simple as it sounds, for the love of god, remove the Vista glass bevel borders around the User Pictures on the Logon screen. It looks ugly. There must be a better way to distinguish the Pictures from the Background- perhaps and Aero Box, with rounded versions of the User Pictures inside it, with a box for password appearing inside the Aero Box when you click on the User Pictures?

I’m sure there’s more, but hitting these six points alone would leave me feeling immensely satisfied. For a long time I solely used OS X. XP, I have to say, I have large qaurels with. Often I’m forced to use it at school, and sometimes just how outdated it is really shows. I used Vista on Boot Camp for a while, and felt that it had some nice feature and a nice GUI, but really needed tightening up.

When I installed Windows 7, I was hooked from Day 1. I really would like to see Microsoft release this on the strong foot, but to do so, they have got a fair bit further to go.

I have been trying to get into the Microsoft Connect web site to download the WDT 2010 Beta to help install Windows 7 on a different computer I have. I have been trying to get in there again for at least 3 days with no luck. Is anyone else having this problem?

I don’t get step no.2. so i should copy the whole image to my current beta drive and edit it then copy it to the cd? or how?? Pls help! Can I just extract the files with winrar, edit the files, and burn it?

After that compatibility check completed and warned about "SQL server 2008 express". However , I continued with uninstalling it.

Installation

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Guess went as charm becuase I went to sleep and woke up in morning to find windows waiting for product key (I skipped that).

Post upgrade

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1- All devices were recognized except my Broadcom WLAN which didn’t work with device manager complaining that it can’t initialize device. After few retries , resolution was to uninstall driver with "delete the driver software for this device" then refreshing devices later.

2- My Cisco VPN client didn’t work , a reinstall took care of the issue.

3- Warning about "AVG AV is on but is reporting its status to windows security center in a format that is no longer supported"

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All in all : I like IE8 , windows media player new look. Windows restarts cleanly now after hanging sometimes before (maybe uninstalling some apps helped).

I attempted to upgrade my Vista Ultimate x64 install to Windows 7 RC (twice now) and the installation seems to come close to finishing but then informs me the upgrade was not successful and rolls back into Vista and gives me a similar message but no reason why.

I then tried a clean install, launching the setup through Vista and had exactly the same problem.

I’m tempted to just boot from the DVD and install that way but what if that doesn’t work?! Any suggestions here?

After spending a lot of time, initially trying to upgrade/install my Vista x64 to Windows 7 x64, I have discovered that the problem was my Gigabyte RAID Controller, GBB363, Windows 7 dislikes the driver which I find quite strange – why is this?! And why couldn’t Windows 7 Setup tell me this before it went ahead?

Part of my analysis involved breaking and recreating my RAID0, so clearly, no way to roll back into Vista. I have now switched RAID off and installed Windows 7 onto one hard drive, it’s not ideal, but I suppose the other disk can be used as a dedicated page file!

First – Excellent work Windows Team. This is by far the best pre-release experience I’ve ever had. The stability and performance of Win7 is fantastic. Thank you for listening and for opening the doors to your process and feature input. I have one small request if its not too late…on a laptop, it would sure be great to automatially disable my wireless adapter when docked or when on a hard line. This is incredibly annoying to have to do manually. I realize that there are third party/OEM apps that cover this but it would be nice to be "out of the box". Thanks again – I am eagerly anticipating RTM!

I’m really suprised that there seems to be no way to leave feedback from the RC version. I did a win7 upgrade of one of my corporate vista laptops I use. I found some issues (noteably the Cisco VPN issues that someone mentioned previously) that were not detected by the upgrade compatability check. There appears to be no way for me to inform Microsoft about what’s broken after the upgrade.

imagine a cluggy desk with papers all around, and windows7 beeing a box with papers…

That pretty much describes my install of windows7 (build7100)

i’m a bit unorganized and verry technology-happy,

so the day it came out on technet i downloaded burned and wacked the dvd into my main machine, wich HAD windows XP SP3 and vista on it… i disliked vista a whole bunch because i had failures of hardware (nvidia drivers) and unsupported hardware of allsorts… so i let windows 7 install over vista and shoving vista aside… i allready deleted vista off my bootlist. so windows 7 now has a XP/7 multiboot menu… well all this info is just meant to draw you a picture that windows 7 isn’t as pickey on what harddrive what partition and what state of drive you are installing… i mean what i did to my pc is a nightmare for software. (and i know it) so in a way this is stressstesting win7 all the way imho 🙂

i’m shocked, positively shocked that the new windows finally REALLY works… as i tried the "new" vista for 2 weeks before giving up on it…

3 x but:

1: the installation went fast and all BUT, not everything is installed.. (like DirectX9 runtime) yes i know most games check DX install but hey it would be nice to update it with the first connection with internet.

2: UAC is still there… but less annoying…

3: search uses a lot of resources in the first few days when your hard drive is cluttered and fragmented like mine. during install i’d like a check for partition fragmentation and defragment if state is unacceptable..

I figured extracting the files to another drive would be a bit much to me just to change two numbers in the entire ISO, ("7077" to "7000") so I experimented a bit. Since an ISO is just all the files on a disk condensed into one large file, I decided the characters would just be the same in the ISO file. Here are the steps I went through trying to do this easily.

First, I opened up notepad. I thought since the characters would be the same, I could just use notepad’s "find" feature and look for "7077". Notepad’s response: "The C:UsersBillyBobDocuments7100.0.090421-1700_x64fre_client_en-us_retail_ultimate-grc1culxfrer_en_dvd.iso file is too large for notepad.

Use another editor to edit the file.

No chance for that, apparently. I then remembered one of my hex editing programs (like all hexadecimal editing programs) had a text string search feature. Another thing about hex editors is that they can open just about any file size, which is pretty useful.

I used the most basic, freeware editor I had ("HxD.exe", lol) and opened the file. I then went into the search dialog, typed in "7077", selected "text string" and voila! Within a few seconds, (took me about 7, times may vary across systems depending on disk transfer rate) the searching bar had disappeared, and left me at the exact section of the file containing the .ini file. I just replaced "77" with "00" and saved.

The save took a bit, considering it makes an entire backup of the file under a .bak extension despite the fact you only change two numbers. Once it was done, I just burned the image. I still have yet to test the upgrade, so I’ll let you guys know.

Well, it took a while, but the upgrade succeeded. All I had to do was reinstall my 802.11g/b PCI desktop card drivers, as well as downgrade my display drivers from 8.15 to 7.14 so I could run Second Life.

Simply enough, if you’re not sure to try the upgrade, Windows Easy Transfer, or just a normal file backup, I’d suggest using this method if your resources are limited like mine.

Oh, I forgot to list that I’m running an HP Pavillion 6010n with an Intel Core 2 Duo @1.80 GHz with 1GB of DDR2 RAM, in the form of two 512MB cards. No graphics card, just Intel Integrated Graphics. I don’t really have an external drive big enough to extract the ISO to, so I had to improvise.

I was curious if there is or will be an upgrade method for a transition from 32 bit (Windows Vista, XP ) to 64 bit Win 7?. It would save a lot of folks who’s pc’s are 64 bit capable but were sold 32 bit OS’s for more competitive pricing?

i let windows 7 install over vista and shoving vista aside… i allready deleted vista off my bootlist. so windows 7 now has a XP/7 multiboot menu… well all this info is just meant to draw you a picture that windows 7 isn’t as pickey on what harddrive what partition and what state of drive you are installing… i mean what i did to my pc is a nightmare for software. (and i know it) so in a way this is stressstesting win7 all the way imho 🙂

The save took a bit, considering it makes an entire backup of the file under a .bak extension despite the fact you only change two numbers. Once it was done, I just burned the image. I still have yet to test the upgrade, so I’ll let you guys know.to help install Windows 7 on a different computer I have. I have been trying to get in there again for at least 3 days with no luck. Is anyone else having this problem?

it came out on technet i downloaded burned and wacked the dvd into my main machine, wich HAD windows XP SP3 and vista on it… i disliked vista a whole bunch because i had failures of hardware (nvidia drivers) and unsupported hardware of allsorts

but if you don’t have a flash drive it does not work. I’m talking about "ReadyBoost". In vista I could install it and get everything right and the thing would still suck back gobs of memory to like 900 megs of memory then after a few min fall back to 400 megs of memory. I KNOW WHY BECAUSE WHEN READYBOOST DOES NOT HAVE A FLASH DRIVE IT USES YOUR SYSTEM MEMORY INSTEAD!!!.

One problem I have found is that running this OS on older hardware means that hardware that used to be able to play even the most basic of games won’t play much anymore.

In my case, this is a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop that happens to have a GeForce 4 Go 440 (32Mb) card in it, and on my Nlited XP installation, it runs Halo and a few other D3D games fine, but on 7, I get problems playing any game, and it complains about not finding D3d, but DxDiag says it is running fine.

Having deactivated RAID, I have newly installed windows 7 onto my HD, and to be honest it’s not the best situation, but there is one perk – I suppose the other disk could be drafter in as a dedicated page file..

I am waiting eagerly for the official release of Windows 7. You know, so much is being talked all around and for the first time in a long time people are expecting good and real hgh from a microsoft operating system. Its great to see MS starting something from scratch and going the extra miles to build something new and having features never thought of before.

Why are people asking about the beta when RC1 is freely available? Also, though not officially supported, I successfully upgraded from beta to RC1 by copying the contents of the DVD to disk and modifying the file to use build 7000 as the minimum. It works great so far!

What will be the processor requirements for that one then? I run Vista and it already takes up 50% CPU when it is idling. I am an MS fan and not keen on MAC’s. Does anyone know whether there will be a server edition for Windows 7 as well? Or will it be Desktop only?

It’s awesome, and quite a deviation from previous Windows beta programs. It’s also a bit surprising that you guys aren’t absolutely furious about all the leaks, but I guess that’s just more real world testing. Can’t wait for the RC, and the RTM.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when we do a specific build internally of Windows 7 we have an extensive step-by-step validation process to ensure quality. This process takes time. Just because a single build may have “leaked” it does not signal the completion of a milestone such as RTM. As always, don’t believe everything that you read on the Internet – except this post ;-).

One of the areas of any release of Windows that receives a significant amount of testing and scrutiny is the performance of graphics – desktop graphics all the way to the most extreme CAD and game graphics. The amazing breadth of hardware supported for Windows and the broad spectrum of usage scenarios contributes to a vibrant ecosystem with many different goals – from just the basics to the highest frame rates on multiple monitors possible. In engineering Windows 7 we set out to improve the ‘real world’ performance of graphics as well as continue to improve the most extreme elements of graphics. […] This post looks at this spectrum of engineering as well as the different ways performance is measured. Ultimately we want to inform you about what we have done in engineering Windows 7, while we leave room for the many forums that will compare and contrast Windows 7 on different hardware and in different scenarios."

it came out on technet i downloaded burned and wacked the dvd into my main machine, wich HAD windows XP SP3 and vista on it… i disliked vista a whole bunch because i had failures of hardware (nvidia drivers) and unsupported hardware of allsorts

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That sucks you can’t upgrade from XP 🙁 Alot of people felt Vista wasn’t delivering so they held out while waiting for something better to come along. MS have to be aware how many ppl are still using XP, they really should offer an upgrade

Great job guys! I am feeling much more capable of adding a comment to a blog or guestbook now. Thanks to you! I have one small request. Lots of blogs and stuff allow you to see the user names of the people who enter comments, but there’s no way to see who the actual person is. If it’s possible to require them to always post a social security number, date of birth, and mother’s maiden name, that would definitely make it easier for people to know who was making a comment. I went to a site the other day and was thinking, Bluegrass Music, Bluegrass Music, we need more of it. Twang twang twiddle twidle ding dang and so forth. It really gets you. I wonder what I should do now.

Hey I am currently Using Windows XP Professionals Version. I want to know whether i be able to upgrade it from Windows XP or I would be required to format my C Drive and install a fresh copy of Windows 7.

Hey I am currently Using Windows XP Professionals Version. I want to know whether i be able to upgrade it from Windows XP or I would be required to format my C Drive and install a fresh copy of Windows 7.

I just talked to a couple of my friends who loaded and have been testin Windows 7 Beta. Overall, they think it is an improvement over Vista, but nothing Earth shattering as of yet. I am probably going to still switch to 7 as soon as it comes out just because I like to keep up with the latest technology. Let’s hope it is a big improvement.

I just talked to a couple of my friends who loaded and have been testin Windows 7 Beta. Overall, they think it is an improvement over Vista, but nothing Earth shattering as of yet. I am probably going to still switch to 7 as soon as it comes out just because I like to keep up with the latest technology. Let’s hope it is a big improvement.

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Thank you for providing this "upgrade back door" info. It’s too bad that I had to get here via third party forums though. Please link this blog from the main RC download site.

While I do appreciate your desire to "telemetry" the installation over VISTA or RAW, the time-cost of re-installing all my apps on my multi-terabyte machine is just too high.

My primary reason for using Win7 is the need to cross the 2 Gig limit imposed by 32-bit XP pro, and to provide better (more stable) support for my three (non-homogeneous) dual-head video cards with six monitors. Can you spell P-O-W-E-R user 🙂

Windows Vista was a real DOG, to be avoided at all cost, as far as I was concerned. In my technical and engineering circles I know of no one who uses it, and many people go into extreme measures in order to get rid of it, when it comes pre-installed on laptops for example.

Win 7 is better than Vista and more sensible in many ways, but the biggest beef is your new (indexed based) SEARCH functionality. I positively HATE it and don’t want it:

1) It is an extreme privacy and security risk: More usage tracks, more data residue and more hacker targets.

2) It is a drain on system resources during indexing.

3) It returns globs and tons unrelated garbage most of the time.

4) I organize my own data. I don’t want it automatically indexed (ever). When I do search, I want a simple, 100% rigorous search which I can strictly configure and CONTROL. I don’t care how long it takes, because I do it very rarely, but I CANNOT tolerate the heuristic uncertainties with indexing.

Attempts at AI within the scope of presently available technology are delusional nonsense.

I have no use for a computer that thinks it is smarter than me and which short-circuits my commands by trying to guess my intentions. My significant other fills that role quite nicely already (thank you very much). I want a computer that is reliable and OBEDIENT.

One problem I am having with my Windows Vista 7 is with the Windows Error Reporting system. Once in a while a program freezes and I get a pop up that says Microsoft Windows Operating System is Not Responding. It then gives me the option to close the program or wait for the program to respond. However, almost every time, in the background, despite my not choosing an option yet, the program in question shuts down, therefore losing all my work. In these type of crashes, it would be nice if Windows could force the program to remain open, or restart it just as you left it, that way work is not lost. Since the programs shut down each time in the background it seems that this is a Windows 7 issue, as this did not happen with my XP.

I have been using Windows 7 since last month, and I still wonder why Microsoft did not give a different posture for windows 7, as i feel no difference inbetween windows 7 and windows Vista. Though they have upgraded systemetic files that reduces less crashes.

The Windows 7 operating system is essentially a sturdier version of Vista, with a few bells and whistles added in for good measure. Features that distinguish Windows 7 from the Vista experience, and considerably from what was provided with XP, are centered around streamlining the user experience, maximizing every last drop from the graphical user interface, improving hardware management and the development of new security measures.

I do wonder though how windows 7 is going to compare to snow leopard by apple which is also coming out next month i believe. It would be interesting to see if this version will get all the pc ship jumpers back to windows

A big part of the beta process is making sure we get as much “real world” coverage of scenarios and experiences as possible and monitor the telemetry of those experience overall. One of the most challenging areas to engineer is the process of upgrading one release of Windows to another. When you think about it, it is the one place where at one time we need to run a ton of code to basically “know” everything about a system before performing the upgrade.

This was actually one of the reasons why I tried one of the ‘unofficial’ builds as it is fixed in those, so I wait with baited breath for the RC1 to be lauched so that I can then surf with no problems!

Why are people asking about the beta when RC1 is freely available? Also, though not officially supported, I successfully upgraded from beta to RC1 by copying the contents of the DVD to disk and modifying the file to use build 7000 as the minimum. It works great so far!

"We don’t have this feature in Windows 7 and we should have." That’s cool. I was actually thinking that whilst reading through. I’m looking forward to properly testing out Windows 7, looks like a great OS from what I’ve read.

All in all first for a Beta (February, 2009) was epic, really stable and now with the RC1 I have no complains at all. And I tested it on my 3.20Ghz Pentium 4 HT PC with 2GB RAM and surprisingly on an old – 8-year-old – 20GB Seagate Hard Disk that runs at 5400RPM and with a buffer cache of 1MB

I’ve tested it. The installation backs up ALL of your files into Windows.old folder, files that matching the default windows named folder names. And all other folders or files that are made by you and are in C: directory, they are just left untouched. And that was THE cleanest installation I performed with Windows 7.

So chill! Why upgrading and mixing everything up with bs, when you can just install a new and clean RC version without even having to backup anything yourself?

Oh yeah, 3 windows 7 installations all have been amazing. Love the fluidness of win 7 and look is awesome. Some stuff is a little confusing to get to but once i use it for a while all will be well. mighty fine job Microsoft! Microsoft for life!

I wanted to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP but I read that I need a fresh install. The thought of installing all the applications again is a bit too much to handle but the reviews of Windows 7 are so good that I just have to buy it. I’m glad I bought it.

I have two laptops with the Win7 RC. I have two windows 7 pro licenses. Can I upgrade from the RC using this workaround to win7 pro? I may be able to get 1 pro license from my company who has an action pack subscription, but most likely I’ll only be able to get win7 pro licenses.

It is nearing the end of the win7 beta trial I believe, and I don’t want 2 laptops that restart every 2 hours.

It was an awesome thing when they launched Vista – as it was for the first time when tehnology used was too much for what an user needs – simple things (aka Windows 7) remain the true gold for each user! Useful lesson here, thanks for sharing!

First and foremost, let me extend my gratitude for accepting my message. This is by far the best ultimate resource for the subject matter. It is a surprise to see dedicated people who really does their homework in providing impeccable information. I’m hoping to read more of your valuable advice and knowledge. Thank you and more power to you my friend!

You can have two speakers that have exactly the same specs and will sound completely different..so spec do not tell the whole story…I would listen to Klipsch speakers first if you can , speakers with in a line usually have similar sound so even if its not the exact model a similar model will give you an idea…I’ve heard that Sonus Farber are the best sounding speakers.

With the launch of Microsoft’s newest technology known as Windows 7 last October 22, 2009, a lot of computer users are trying to wonder about hardware and software updates that they might need to upgrade to Windows 7. Do you wonder how it is to find and install this version’s printer driver for your HP printers?

Upgrading from the beta to the RC was a pain, but after reading this guide, I know I made the right choice. Now I’m running windows 7 RC with no problems and with all my configurations set. Good to see some quality work from Microsoft.

I did think long and hard before deciding if an upgrade to windows 7 or a fresh install would have been the better option. From previous experience with upgrades, I decided to take the ‘safer’ route with a clean install.

The new format installation is fantastic, and the installtion went through without a glitch, not the mention the fact it installs super fast.

Wow, every time they come out with something that I see any benefit in, it gets fixed. I am already looking at ways to force an install pass the error, there is no way I am going to put up with Windows 7 if this is the case for long.

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The new format installation is fantastic, and the installtion went through without a glitch, not the mention the fact it installs super fast.

Upgrading from the beta to the RC was a pain, but after reading this guide, I know I made the right choice. Now I’m running windows 7 RC with no problems and with all my configurations set. Good to see some quality work from Microsoft.

Have been trying to use W7 – though the difference between Vista and 7 is HUGE!, I am still keen in using XP. After using both I think that 7 is the best windows version, but I cannot find a reason why to move from XP. Having an official license and constant updates keeps you away from any threats.

Windows 7 is definitly great software to work with. The difference between Vista and Windows 7 is very obvious: Using Vista, my computer crashed 19 times, using Windows 7, my computer only crashed once!

I am running WIn 7 on my newly built rig (i7 920 OC to 4 Ghz, 6 Gb Corsair Dom GT TR3XGT 7-8-7-20, Asus Rampage II Ex, BFG GTX 285, 2X300 Gb V-Raptors in RAID-0, 1 TB WD RE3, Corsair HX1000W Etc, Etc). This is a test rig for me as I use my QX6700 set up for work and play. I love Win 7 so far. Best OS since DOS 3.0 🙂 I plan on starting clean with the Win 7 RC1 when it is available.

P.S. Blasting MS because they are not spending the time and money to make it easy for crybabys to use a new, free (for now) RC1. Stop weining and using language like a 14 YO if you want to be taken seriously.

Interesting post, It´s just a given when switching to a new version of Windows that a complete whipe and fresh install is the only way to avoid broken software, performance loss and funky crash states and or obscure error messages

Total for the first Beta (February, 2009) was epic, very stable, and now with RC1 I’m not complaining at all. I tested this on my 3.20 GHz Pentium 4 HT PC with 2GB RAM and a surprise on the old – 8-year-old woman – 20GB Seagate hard drive that works at 5400RPM and 1 MB cache buffer

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The post is really interesting. Let me share my experience with you. I have installed windows 7, it’s really nice i like the graphics i like the interface they have created and its really light. My suggestion for all of your system is slow then install windows 7 in your pc it’ll boost up your computer speed.

Every time window 7 updates, it messes up the whole status of my desktop and reconfigures the MSN.com to less information and news. I hate this program and its constant reconfiguring every tiny step. Just leave it alone.

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Hi team. I have been trying some of the other builds out, but have now almost copied this before you even posted it. I reverted to Vista Home premium (factory install) and then re-installed an upgrade to Windows 7 build 7000 in anticapation of the RC1 when its released. That means I am now back with IE8 crashing nearly all the time when trying to access some of my favourite websites.

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